Whither Wander You
by happybirthdayanna
Summary: AU: You and Puck are spies working for two different spy agencies, sent as a pair due to investigate the secrets of mysterious mega-corporation Xanatos Enterprises. Spy stuff happens. So does a little more. (Happy birthday bro! I know next to nothing about Gargoyles but uhhhhhhhhhhh I tried so)
1. Chapter 1

"You're new to this, aren't you?" Puck sneers, strolling through the front doors of Xanatos Enterprises with an air of relaxed disdain.

"I'm–no. No," you say, crossing your arms defensively. "I've prepared for this."

Puck flashes a beaming expression at the receptionist, who barely looks up from her computer when you both walk in without impediment. You let out a small sigh of relief. Step one of infinity was over.

"That wasn't my question, though, was it?" Puck murmurs to you through his smile, giving the receptionist a wave of goodbye. "You're new to this, Dionysus. It's obvious. Too obvious. You look like a tiny bird, flitting around so anxiously like that. Target may as well be painted on your back."

You tense and dart your eyes to the businessmen walking around you. Was Puck right? Did any of them suspect you of being a spy? All of them bustle past you with apparent obliviousness, but your skin is prickling with fear anyway, and you can hear your heart pounding like a gong in your ears. Only one person has to notice you don't belong and the whole mission could–

"Hey. Di." Puck grabs your arm and spins you so that you're facing him. "It's alright, okay? The more you think about it the worse it'll get for you. Relax or you'll jeopardize the mission, and more importantly, me. Be normal."

"Of course I'm normal, why wouldn't–" you laugh loudly and awkwardly. "Why wouldn't I be normal? This is normal. This is all normal."

Puck smiles, and despite the gravity of the situation, your brain notes the clear sincerity of it, the obvious mirth shining in his eyes. It's a lopsided smirk, mischievous and devilish and delighted with a hint of condescension. It's far from the perfect smiles he was plastering on his face for the Xanatos employees around you; this was a smiles meant for you and you alone, for the only person in the building he could trust. In just that simple expression, you felt that, at least for the next hour, it was just you and Puck against the world.

"I know it's your first day," Puck says as he starts walking towards the elevators. "But a key part of this job is being laid back because you know you have the power to back it up. You have to be in control as easily as you'd be in your own living room. If there's madness, it has to be your madness, your chaos. Own your chaos. Make the chaos bow to you."

The elevator door dings open and Puck glides in purposefully. You trail in after, wondering at how he makes even simple movements smooth and lively at the same time. Like water and fire. Cool and crackling with energy.

"I'll–keep that in mind," you reply. "You should be a motivational speaker."

Puck waves his hand dismissively. "Nah, I'm not a dealing with other people kind of guy. I work for Children of Oberon, I look out for me. Anyone else gets in the way."

"Really?" The sides of your mouth quirk up. "And what does that make me?"

Puck pulls a paper clip out of his hair and bends it into a straight line of metal, sticking it into the lock next to the button for the top-secret 20th floor.

"An exception," he says casually, focusing intently on jimmying the lock with careful precision.

Before you can respond, the button for the 20th floor turns orange with a ding and the elevator starts moving, carrying you both up to the executives-only offices of Xanatos. Puck steps back from the button panel with an air of smug satisfaction, twirling the paper clip between his fingers jauntily before sticking it behind his ear.

"Here, our fake IDs. We'll need them to blend in among the top dogs." Puck hands a gleaming card to you with a flourish bearing the name Rae Zelmist. Puck slips his own into his pocket, and you catch a glimpse of the name Owen Burnett.

"That's kind of a boring name compared to your real one," you note, sliding your own ID card into your handbag.

Puck raises his eyebrows at you with an incredulous grin. "This whole time I've been calling you by your codename and you really thought I wasn't using one too?"

"No, I knew it was your codename," you sigh in defeat. "I was trying to see if I could trick you into telling me your actual one."

Puck snickers and leans forward playfully. "Fine, I'll respect a fellow trickster, as abysmal as the attempt was. But why exactly do you need to break safety protocol just to know?"

"You don't seem like the type to care about safety protocol!"

"I'm not. But you are." Puck tilts his head. "Why the curiosity, greenie?"

You shrug. Frankly, you don't really know. You're just compelled, for some reason. You understand that both the Manhattan Clan and the Children of Oberon have rules about learning names for their agents' safety and the organizations' traceability, but you've always found it alienating. What was the point of completing team missions without an appropriate sense of camaraderie?

Completing the mission would be the point, you can almost hear Goliath gruffly explain as you recall your pre-assignment briefing, call to mind the stern but fond expression Goliath always reserved for you. Camaraderie would only be a side effect. And given the partner you've been assigned, a dangerous side effect at that.

You remember how scared you were to hear those words, how you instantly conjured the image of a menacing beast of a man with knives for teeth and obsidian for eyes. You look at the actual man standing before you, leaning against the back wall of the elevator with a lazy leer, and think Goliath was both wrong and right, in some ways. Puck, with his nimble frame and impish face, was hardly a hulking, looming threat. But there was something, a shadow hiding in his features, that suggested a formidable danger lurked beneath his jaunty exterior. Looking at him from certain angles, it wasn't that hard to believe his smile could draw blood, that his eyes glinted with the cold ferocity of igneous stone.

Then again, from other angles, he also kind of looked like a total fucking dumbass, honestly. Like, cartoonishly stupid. So who really knew who this man was, deep down?

"We're here," Puck announces, suddenly snapping you out of your reverie.

While you hurriedly try to gather your thoughts, he strides out of the elevator and turns left to avoid the busier section of the floor. You follow his path through the grid of cubicles, furtively absorbing your surroundings as you go. You're slightly cowed by the wealth and quiet efficiency of the environment, the sleek minimalist design of the offices a sharp juxtaposition from the cozy spirit of the Manhattan Clan. Everything was designed to evoke class: the chairs were stiff and backed with leather, the cubicles were spacious but designed from rigid mahogany, there was no decoration to be found even on the personal desks of the frowning businessmen. The closest thing to an adornment was a wall of glass panels overlooking the city skyline. From this height, you can see the tops of skyscrapers with ease, look down on everyone without a care. Goddamn businessmen.

"IDs?" A security guard in a black blazer steps towards them with a furrowed brow. Clear suspicion brimmed in his eyes, though the rest of his face was placid.

Puck plasters his classic fake grin on his face as he whips out his card, and you sheepishly do the same. The guard squints at each of your cards and crosses his arms.

"I ain't ever seen y'all around here before," he says, glaring at you.

"Sir, she's new, I'm showing her around. New recruit, cute little thing, she's so nervous." Puck said, putting a hand on your shoulder and pulling you close in an act of familiarity. Or faux familiarity, perhaps. You can't be sure.

The guard frowns and puts a hand on his chin. You wave at the guard and smile, though you' think it may look more like a wince.

"Fine, Burnett, if you say so." The guard sighs and waves you away. "Don't let her get into any trouble."

"Will do, sir, keep up the absolutely wonderful work," Puck says with a sarcastic salute, hurrying you away rapidly towards the main office space. Your shoes clack on the marble floor as you walk; Puck, with his airy step, moves soundlessly.

"He didn't give you that much trouble," you mutter bitterly under your breath.

"Well, you know how it is with these rich guys," Puck sneers. "Stuck up bastards. I can't wait to take them all down a peg and pop their balloons a bit."

You nod, even though you're not sure you agree. In fact, you're not even sure you buy what Puck's saying. It didn't feel like it made total sense. But then again, that was true of everything about Puck, wasn't it? You decide not to dwell on it too much. You have a job to do. Camaraderie could wait.

You wonder, once again, what Puck's real name is. For a moment, you wonder if he's wondering too.


	2. Chapter 2

You start walking towards the glass panels while Puck walks towards the back of the room, whistling a soft tune with his hands in his pockets. Out of the corner of your eye, you glance at Xanatos's office, separate from all the cubicles and obscured by black tinted glass. Inside that room only a quick walk away was the richest, most powerful man in the city, and you were going to take him down.

You look out at the city, tapping your foot aggressively. This is the part where you're just supposed to wait for Puck to do his thing, but you hate waiting. You're stressed enough as it is without having to stand still with nothing else to do. You count the windows on the buildings below to occupy your mind. It does help distract you, actually, by reminding you how much you care about the city you're trying to defend. A drop of exhilarating anarchy runs through the lifeblood of Manhattan; the city is a supernova of possibility organized in a matrix of crowded roads and subway routes. It's just the right amount of humanity and mayhem, and you're eternally in love with it. You may not know why Puck is doing this, but you know exactly what's driving you to protect this city.

"Fuck, fuck!" you hear someone shout behind you, and suddenly a squadron of sprinklers above your head spritz on.

You whip around and see a crackling fire engulfing the back of the room as dozens of elegant men in suits run screaming towards the stairs. Puck shouts basic evacuation instructions over the pandemonium before glancing at you for just a moment and winking. You smile slightly and slip into a cubicle, staying out of sight of the fleeing employees. Funny, you'd think a place with this much money would have better safety training. This is what happens when all the cash goes to aesthetic and industry rather than basic procedures.

"Go, go, go!" Puck urges the people streaming out, standing next to the stairway wearing the security guard's jacket. You don't know how he got it. You're not even sure it's part of the plan; it's entirely possible Puck stole it out of dumb mischievous impulse.

You lean back against the oak desk in the cubicle, trying to lay low and stay out of sight. It's not really necessary, you think. Panicking people rarely notice their surroundings. Then again, calm people don't pay much attention to their surroundings either, considering how easily you and Puck managed to get this far. Goliath had always assured you that you notice yourself far more than other people notice you, but you'd never really believed him, and you never believed his theory would work this well. You walked into Xanatos Enterprises jumpy and scared, and yet here you are, watching the plan work without a hitch. Realizing just how many doors you thought were locked could be opened with a little deception gives you a rush of euphoria, a sense of invincibility and superiority and power. It's almost terrifying, in a way, having your limits suddenly stripped from you. Who do you become when you know rules are an illusion? What do you do when you can do anything?

This must be, you suddenly think, how Puck feels all the time.

"Di, are you okay?" Puck calls out after the room has been empty for a few moments and the sound of frantic footsteps has faded away.

You nod. "Great."

"You're ready, then?"

"Oh," you say, smiling. "Hell yeah I am."

Puck smiles back. "Fantastic."

You stride over to Xanatos's office, feeling your adrenaline pump into your veins. For the first time today, your energy is excitement, not nervousness; you finally have the skills to back your confidence up. You're the best in the game at what you do, and that's not just pride. There's a reason the Manhattan Clan sent an agent with no experience to infiltrate one of the biggest companies in New York.

You throw open the door and practically leap behind Xanato's desk, Puck slipping in after you. Xanato's laptop, a sleek black device thinner than a pencil, sits innocuously on the desk's polished wood surface, as if it didn't contain enough information to destroy the world thirty times over. You crack your knuckles and glide your fingers along the keyboard; the data is practically humming beneath your fingertips.

You power the laptop on and get to work, plugging in code and disabling firewalls with ease. The system is more complicated than the ones you're used to–whatever dark cybersecurity Xanatos had paid for, he certainly got his money's worth–but it's still nothing you can't handle when you break it down to its core. You've always had a natural knack for seeing through the convoluted mess and pulling out the possibilities, a knack that made you better and sharper than expert hackers twice your age. Their problem, you think, is that they try to make it into a a science, an art, even though it's all just predictable ones and zeroes in the end. And Xanatos, for all his rich guy power and status, can't make it any more than that. As such, after only minutes of tinkering and tweaking, you've broken through.

"I'm in," you say in your best deep hacker voice, turning the laptop towards Puck so he can see the home screen fade in.

Puck leans forward towards it, admiring the laptop as if it were a piece in the Louvre. Sincere admiration is plain on his face as he drinks in the sight of your accomplishment, smiling brightly.

"Incredible," he breathes. "Absolutely incredible, Dionysus."

It is, you realize, the first time you've ever seen him without a twist of irony in his expression. Even when he was faking civility for the guards there was a hint of condescension dancing in his eyes, but right now his face is so open, his eyes are shining, his lips are–

You turn the laptop back to yourself and start typing furiously, scouring the computer for Xanato's files. Your face is hot all of a sudden. A leftover effect from the fire, maybe.

"I'll bleed this computer dry in no time, I've got this tech that transfers data like–" You snap your fingers. "Instantaneous. Doesn't leave a trace of my presence, either. I'll have the most important information in New York in a minute and no one will know."

"And they said it couldn't be done." Puck's smile widens. "You're brilliant beyond odds."

"T-Thanks," you manage to get out until he adds mischievously, "For a newbie."

"Hey, screw you!" You protest over his snickering, although there's a smile tugging at the corner of your mouth as well.

Puck shrugs off your protest and hops onto the table in one fluid leap, sitting himself down on the glass surface and crossing his legs. The tip of one of his shoes almost touches one of your hands. You've haven't really been paying attention to his shoes, but now you quickly notice that he's wearing boots, plain black but long and almost jester-like, a subtle but distinct contrast to the rest of his businessman disguise. You wonder why he would wear shoes like that, risk drawing unwanted attention just for a fashion statement. They must be special, somehow. Or maybe Puck is just bold enough to do it. Maybe Puck is bold enough to do anything.

The spy in question leans in towards you to get a better look at the laptop screen. His long white hair brushes your cheek for a moment, and you're suddenly aware of just how close you two are, so close that if you turned your faces towards each other your noses would touch, your breath would mix, your eyes would only be able to meet each other's.

You clear your throat and abruptly shove Puck off the table, spinning around in your chair so he can't see your face. He falls to the ground with a loud squawk, and you would burst out laughing if you weren't so bone deep embarrassed. Puck rises back to his feet, and despite everything, he's somehow still so graceful that he makes the fall look almost deliberate, like you and him are performing an experimental dance routine but only he knows the choreography.

It's so unfair, you think as you watch him practically waltz forward, trying to slow your staccato heart. It's so unfair that someone as awkward as you got paired with the most chaotic and insufferable and attractive spy of all time.

Wait. Shit.

"What was that for?" Puck asks, more curiosity than anger in his tone.

You swallow and quickly compose yourself. "Nothing, I just–thought I saw a malware. And I panicked. But it was a false alarm, so. Everything's okay now."

Puck raises his eyebrows. "Okay."

"It is okay."

It isn't okay, but it doesn't seem like Puck knows or cares as he leans back against the table like he's already forgotten. You hold back a sigh of relief; the moment is over, and both of you can ignore it. You're lucky nobody else from the Manhattan Clan came on the mission, or else you'd never hear the end of the teasing. Thank God you two are alone.

"Wait, cameras," you blurt out, leaping out of your chair.

Puck whips his head around to face you. "What?"

"Aren't there security cameras? There must be. Puck, we forgot the security cameras." Panic suddenly fills your throat. "What are we going to do, one of us has to go down to the security room and disable them and get the old footage or we're–"

"Relax, I'll do it, they trust me." Puck puts a reassuring hand on your shoulder, not in the least worried, the monster. "It's a little hitch in the plan, I'm surprised you didn't notice it earlier, honestly, I'll just–"

"No." You squeeze your eyes shut. "I'll do it."

Puck's hand on your shoulder goes unnaturally still. "What?"

"I'll go down to the security room and fix this, this is my fault."

"Your–" Puck grabs your arms and spins you around so that you two are face to face. "Sorry, how is this your fault?"

"I forgot about the security cameras, I'm the hacker, it's my job to deal with the tech side and I–"

"We both forgot," Puck cuts in. "We both forgot, we're both equally to blame, and I'm the more experienced spy, I'll sneak down there, no one will notice, I'm sure."

You shake your head, barely listening to his words. "I forgot because I was distracted, that's not a good enough reason to–we're in this mess all because I was too busy thinking about–about–"

You take a deep breath and steel yourself.

"You shouldn't have to put yourself at risk for something I did. I'm going," you say.

"This isn't your responsibility."

"I'm going."

Puck gives you a long, considering look, strangely sober. He looks truly serious, an expression that doesn't fit right on his face. Like everything about Puck, the cause of his deep sternness is unfathomable. What reason would he have to search your soul? You only met an hour ago, you're not close, you're not friends.

Are you?

"You're really something, Di," he finally says, and something about his tone makes that one sentence mean everything. "But you can't be the one to go."

"I have to."

"No, you don't understand," Puck says, shaking his head. "You can't go at all."

He pulls a handgun out of his left boot and points it at you. Your mind and body freeze.

"I see I'm right on time," you hear a voice say right outside Xanatos's office.

When you turn towards it, you see the man himself, standing in the doorway in an impeccable suit like he didn't have a care in the world.

"Time's up, I'm afraid," Xanatos says apologetically, tapping a finger on his Rolex. "The game is over."


End file.
